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Forum:Book episode guides
As you may have noticed in the Latest intel page, I have assumed the task of writing several articles for people, places, and things that showed up during the Declassified novels. Since the books are canon (shown by the inclusion of several TV character's actions in their own respective articles), summaries of the events need to be included, much like the show's episode guides. Before I go into further detail about what I want to have done, let me go through a few (possibly obvious) points so that anyone who hasn't read the books would understand: * The books in the novels are divided in 24 chapters, much like the TV show, with each chapter representing one hour of the story. * The chapters are about 15-25 pages each, which would take the casual reader about 20 minutes to read (half the length of a TV episode, significantly longer than, say, an episode of The Rookie). * Amongst the chapters are time stamps, much like the TV show, that frame the time and location setting of each scene. Each scene marks off about 10 minutes of story time, making each time stamp, therefore, less frequent than the ones on the show. * The TV episode guides on this site are about 20KB in size. With that said, I would like to propose that episode guides for individual chapters of the books be written. I'd rather not have each book's summary restricted to the 3 paragraph passage found in the back of the book, since that format simply echoes what you'd find on Amazon.com; and there's so much more to say than that concerning character and plot development and how the books apply as prequels to the TV series. So here's how I'd do it. The chapter guide would be written in the same format as an episode guide on this website: sidebar, summary, the guide itself, quotes, dramatis personae, and notes. As for the guide, since my theory holds that a chapter of a novel is about half that of an episode, then a chapter guide would be about 10KB. Additionally, if every action, quote, or breath made by Jack Bauer is mentioned, then you might as well have just read the book, right? Therefore, each individual summarized scene would probably be only half long as each TV scene summarized here: 2 or 3 paragraphs. This would make a chapter guide perhaps 5 or 6 KB in space, but, in my opinion, it would still be large enough to merit its own medium-sized article, as opposed to a 120KB superarticle, if the chapter summary were written all on the same page. I'll write a guide up for one or two chapters by next weekend or so, as a type of experimental sandbox to give you all a visual aid and to provide input. So that's basically the jist of it. I'd appreciate any feedback regarding this potential project. Thanks. --Deege515 02:12, 10 June 2007 (UTC) : I have to say that I'm really opposed to doing separate articles for each chapter. Despite your theory of reading a chapter taking half the time it takes to watch an episode (which I don't even necessarily agree with), I seriously doubt that detailed summaries of novel chapters would even come close to those of a TV episode. The novel chapters often seem quite short and I'm pretty sure that considerably less than half the events of a TV episode happen in each one. Many of the chapters only have one or two noteworthy things happen. I'd be extremely surprised if a detailed synopsis of a book would even come close to your projected 120KB, but feel free to test it out like you said. --Proudhug 02:26, 10 June 2007 (UTC) Each of The Game episode articles are only about 2 or 3 paragraphs in length. I remember reading from a while back that you oppose the structure of The Game articles and would rather prefer the pages to be divided by mission title rather than hour (correct me if I'm wrong). Regardless, those are still separate articles divided at some point in the storyline. Each chapter in the books would be as long, if not longer, than The Game articles nonetheless. I just feel that it's necessary for there to be much more content in the book pages than the current article structure that has its dramatis personae of one character a line taking up 75% of the article's vertical space. (As for my 120KB projection, I drew this from my initial 5 KB estimate of an individual chapter article: 5 * 24 = 120.) --Deege515 02:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC) : I agree that the synopses should be expanded and detailed, but even if this does result in overly long articles, we can always move the detailed synopsis to a separate page like the "Jack Bauer on Day 1"-type articles. Do you have any other reason for separate pages, other than longer synopses? This simpler solution would work to solve the problem you brought up. : As for separating The Game articles into missions, the reason for this is that A) the missions do have individual titles, and most importantly, B) the pages can include a lot more besides a synopsis, such as hints, walkthroughs, maps, lists of available weapons and items, easter eggs, bugs, or other useful information pertaining to each specific mission. Having the articles divided into hours like the TV show makes no sense for The Game. --Proudhug 03:11, 10 June 2007 (UTC) :: I can see where a detailed hour by hour could come in handy for the novels, but I just don't think it's absolutely neccessary. I rather have a detailed summary on the novel page then specific information as it relates to a specific character on the character's profile page (and of course making new pages such as "Jack Bauer during novel name here). Just a suggestion. --JoeyBags79 21:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC) I have a proposal because I definately think that the text on the back of the book is not enough for a summary. * Under the "book jacket summary" a link to "NOVEL NAME guide" * In the guide there are subsections for each "episode" in the novel * There is a summary of the "episode's" events in the subsetion * IF this article exceeds 30-40KB, divide it into quarters, like the Jack Bauer on Day 6 page, except on different pages Please provide feedback. - Protocol Red 02:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC) : The jacket summaries are merely placeholders and should be replaced with lengthy synopses approximating those of the episodes, with the chapter subsections mirroring the episode act subsections. I doubt any of the novels' summaries would ever reach a ridiculous length, but yes, if it did, the summary could be put onto a separate page. --Proudhug 02:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC) :: I think that the whole episode guide on Hell Gate (3 or 4 hours) feels kind of obtrusive and that the whole novel guide should go on the "NOVEL guide" page - Protocol Red 02:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC) : How is it any more obtrusive than an episode summary? --Proudhug 03:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC) :: The first hour of the Hell Gate summary was 23 lines long, which extends to 552 lines for a novel. I took a good episode guide which I consider thorough but not a super-extensive one, Day 3 1:00pm-2:00pm, which is just 176 lines, 31.9% of the Hell Gate one, over 3x the text, which I do see as being much more obtrusive than an episode summary. - Protocol Red 21:05, 4 July 2007 (UTC) : That summary needs to be reformatted somewhat, but assuming you're correct, once we get a full summary done, one which isn't unnecessarily long, we can figure out where to put it. --Proudhug 21:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC) :: I started one for Trojan Horse. All i've done is the Prologue but here it is. Plz provide feed<. - Protocol Red 22:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC) : I moved the summary to the Trojan Horse page for now. As I said, if it winds up getting too long, we can consider moving it to its own page later. --Proudhug 00:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC) I have been working on making a guide for Trojan Horse and will eventually try to do the others, but the page is all ready the 4th longest in the wiki, even though i've only summarized 14 of the 24 chapters. Do people have particular preferences as to whether i move it off the main Trojan Horse article? i did it when i started over the summer, but Proudhug thought i should wait.--Protocol Red 01:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC) : I personally don't have a problem with the novel pages being really long (isn't that why we have a TOC?), but if others do, we can move the detailed summary to its own article. Either way, I still say leave it until its finished. Anyone else? --Proudhug 03:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC) I think this was suggested higher up, but maybe the book guides should be divided into say 4 seperate pages, each page covering six hours. If not, what about a total sepeate page for all the episodes, which would include a design similar to that of a page e.g. the episodes on the page Day 1, but with more information? Then there would be less on the main page for the article, but still a decent amount of information. Just a thought. SignorSimon 23:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)